


there’s a better home awaiting

by genresavvy



Category: BioShock Infinite
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-03
Updated: 2014-01-03
Packaged: 2018-01-07 06:41:42
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 752
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1116703
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/genresavvy/pseuds/genresavvy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>he still feels the need to whisper, “i’m here, i’m never gonna leave you.” and he wakes up the next day to find he fell asleep next to her crib.</p>
            </blockquote>





	there’s a better home awaiting

Booker has these nightmares — they don’t make much sense at all once he wakes up, but in that moment when he’s asleep, they seem so real. Anna’s gone, and he’s looking for her, but she goes by a different name and she’s grown up now. But then, after he finds her, he realizes in that way the realize you knew it all along in dreams that she wasn’t stolen from him. He gave her away — willingly.

When he wakes up from those nightmares he finds himself opening the door to her room before he even realizes he’s awake, stumbling over to her crib. It was just a nightmare, but he still breathes easier when he sees Anna asleep in her crib, peacefully and quietly sleeping. He rests his head on his arms resting on the side of her crib, and he doesn’t know why he feels like he’s about to cry. It was only a nightmare.

He still feels the need to whisper, “I’m here, I’m never gonna leave you.” and he wakes up the next day to find he fell asleep next to her crib.

It would be true to describe Booker as protective, but it wouldn’t be entirely accurate. Protective almost implies that it’s without reason. Booker’s protectiveness is less emotional, and more…practical. It’s the attitude of someone who has already lost someone or had something horrible happen. People whisper that he had a daughter before, and he lost her — through illness or kidnapping or some other such horrible thing — and that it why he is so careful when it comes to Anna.

No one knows whether this is true or not, and no one has asked him. It seems way too out of line.

He knows about the whispers. He always knows about the whispers — he’s a private investigator for christ’s sake, of course he knows. He never gives them an answer to any of their questions. After all he doesn’t owe it to them.

Anna takes to reading like a fish takes to water. Booker is honestly baffled — he’d never really been much of a reader (he could read, of course, but it just wasn’t something he did in his spare time) — he doesn’t know where she gets it. He gets her more books, though, whenever he can. It’s hard, though, because she’s so bright and he’s a little worried that he’s going to give her a book that goes into stuff that she shouldn’t know about at her age.

Over time, he becomes well acquainted with the owner of the book store in the town, an old man who sympathizes with the fact that he’s raising a little girl all on his own. He’s about the only person who doesn’t annoy Booker in regards to that, because he doesn’t offer false sympathies or ask prying questions about his late wife, as if they will see into his pain and help him recover from loss or some horseshit like that. 

Sometimes he reads to Anna, but he’s not very good at reading out loud — he reads it wrong and doesn’t have the right tone, and he has a feeling that Anna is just humoring him when she asks him to read to her.

Anna loves dancing. She loves music. She drags him over whenever she plays music and tries to get him to dance. She’s just about the only person who ever could talk him into dancing (other than her mother, but she’s gone so that doesn’t matter anymore) and while he rolls his eyes and acts like he’s only doing it for her, he enjoys the time spent with her.

One day Anna reads about Paris in a book, and she tells him that they are both going there some day. Doesn’t ask him if they could maybe possibly go, no, she tells him that they’re going. She starts a plan in a little notebook that he buys her, listing off all the things that they’ll need on their trip and what they need to look at. He buys her a French phrasebook, and she thanks him profusely for it, hugging him tightly before she runs off to start reading it.

Booker can’t help but to smile a little, and without saying a word to her about it, he starts leaving small amounts of money in a glass jar by the door, where he drops it when he comes home from work.

It’s for Paris, of course, but it’s really for her. Just like everything else.

**Author's Note:**

> i posted this on tumblr a while back, and only recently remembered it and re-read it, so i figured i'd post it on here, too!


End file.
